Clinical deterioration in cardiac patients results from many known conditions and diseases, including tumors and/or aneurisms, stenosis or other disease of the valves, muscle damage due to myocardial infarction, and the like. Extensive efforts in the area of cardiac transplantation have been undertaken, to combat such cardiac deterioration, in those cases for which alternative treatments proved ineffective.
Notably, progressive cardiac deterioration frequently results from localized cardiac muscle damage which, at least in theory, would not require cardiac transplantation were alternate methods of cardiac reconstruction available. Just as prostheses were developed to repair damaged or diseased cardiac valves, therefore, a significant need persists for a method of reconstructing cardiac muscle in the event of localized damage such as ventricular tumor, aneurism, or other localized abnormality.